Wretched Saints - A 5 Day Journey To TruthSample

FAULTY SENSORS: Lies of Satan

False intel, if believed, can have fatal results. 

Just after Christmas 2017, Wichita police responded to a 911 call about a man at a certain address who had killed his father, was holding his mother and brother hostage, and was going to burn the house down.

The tactical response team placed a sniper in position and rang the doorbell. A man opened the door, and police told him to raise his hands. He did, but then for some reason he reached for his waistband. The police sniper fired his rifle and killed the man.

Unfortunately, none of it was true.

An online gamer had gotten mad at a fellow gamer and had said he was going to “swat” him. Swatting is making a false 911 call to bring the S.W.A.T. team to another person’s house, supposedly as a prank. In this case, the threatened gamer gave someone else’s address instead of his own, and the police responded.

Who knows why Andrew Finch’s address was given? What’s certain, and permanent, is that the police were given false information and Andrew Finch, father of two young children, is dead.

Because of false information.

If only this were an isolated case of someone acting with a tragic and permanent effect on information that is false and unsubstantiated. The reality is that it’s a way of life for all of us. The shame of it, for a Christian, is that we of all people ought to be walking in the truth, not according to lies.

How many women have aborted their babies based on false-positive test results indicating genetic disorders? How many marriages end or never happen because one or both people have fears about how things are “destined” to turn out? How many innocent young men have been gunned down in the street because it appeared they had a gun in their hand when it was only a phone? 

When you can’t tell if the information you’re getting is true or false, you can end up believing lies. And acting on them.

Liar, Failure, Weakling, Idiot, Reject, Freak, Embarrassment, Loser …

If you stare long enough at the blinking light of a false sensor, you will begin to believe it is true. 

When you believe something, you act on it.

If you believe you’re too stupid to ever figure out tough problems, you won’t try things that require a sharp brain—even if you could have done them with ease. 

Do you see how acting on a false warning light actually causes the lies you believe about yourself to become true? You did that. You made it true because you believed it about yourself.

What we believe about ourselves determines how we behave. We rise or sink to the level we hold to be true of us.

Then it goes another step deeper: You begin to believe that the lie is the only true thing about yourself, and you build out your identity accordingly. 

Here’s the good news: You are acting on false information, but that can stop. It’s not even your fault that you’re hearing these false messages. Satan is screaming them in your ear. The angst you are feeling … it isn’t reality and it can end today. You are acting on false sensors. The voices in your head that scream, “Unloved! Unaccepted! Unworthy!” are lying to you. They come from the father of lies, the accuser of the brethren.